The moves to make to get your financial life back on track

Are you struggling with any aspect of your personal finance? Are you ready to make a change to improve your financial situation? There are a few basic financial moves you can make to get your finances back on track.

What is a common reason that many people end up with financial problems?
They don’t actively manage their personal finances because they don’t want to commit the time or they just don’t really care that much about their personal financial situation. Choosing to ignore managing your financial matters only leads to massive financial problems.

What is the biggest hurdle for people to actively manage their personal finances?
Even though people will say it’s time, it really comes down to knowledge. Most people don’t understand personal financial matters and they don’t want to commit to understanding even the basics. Sometimes they just don’t realize how much this lack of knowledge negatively impacts their financial situation.

What is the most basic personal financial concept?
Knowing where your money is going is the most important and basic financial concept to understand. Without understanding how much you spend and where you spend your money, you really can’t make any smart financial decisions.

After establishing where the money is going, what’s next?
Once you know where your money is going, you can than develop goals for savings, paying of debt, purchasing bigger tickets, saving for retirement and making other financial decisions. These can be short term or long term, but establishing financial goals beyond having enough money to last the week is a critical financial move.

After goals are established what’s the most important move?
It’s creating a roadmap on how you will actually achieve those goals and this usually means creating a budget. A simple budget will work. The important point is to have actionable activities identified than you can begin to implement.

What is the next move after establishing a budget?
The next step is living the budget for 90 days and making any adjustments necessary to make the budget work. Most people won’t get the budget correct the first time. If you make your budget a work in progress for the first 90 days or more, you are much more likely develop a budget that you can stick to over the long run.

Are there places to turn if help is needed?
Yes, there are financial courses you can take, advisors from local financial institutions or other organizations that provide financial counseling or even online communities. Your friends or family might be an option if you know they can be objective and most importantly, have a deep understanding of personal finances.

In the end, what is the most important move in changing your financial situation?
Without question, financial improvement can only be achieved if you are committed to actively managing your personal finances. Leaving anything to chance when it comes to personal finances is definitely a recipe for financial issues at some point.